Axman Werebear (Saw Bears Book 5) Read Online Free PDF Page A

his hands up in surrender and muttered, “Don’t breathe fire on me.” Then he jogged around the front of his truck and settled behind the wheel.
    “I don’t breathe fire.”
    “Bullshit. I watched Damon burn an entire clearing a few days ago.”
    “My father can. I’m not a full dragon. My mother was a bear. I don’t have the fire, and neither do my half-brothers, who are also part bear.”
    Bruiser swung a shocked gaze to her. “You’re half bear?”
    “My mother was a black bear. Father got lucky that I was born with his shifter instead of hers.”
    “Wow.” He blinked back his surprise and turned the engine. “I never in a million years would’ve guessed Damon would fall for a black bear. He seems so…uptight.”
    “He didn’t fall for my mother. I told you, we don’t do love. He paid her lots of money to breed with her, and she left two days after I was born, much richer for having known my father. She was a paid broodmare. Nothing more and nothing less.”
    “That’s really fucked up,” he muttered, pulling around Denison’s Bronco. “No wonder you don’t believe in love.”
    “It’s not about believing in it, you silly man. Dragon’s just don’t feel like lesser shifters do. Love doesn’t exist for us.”
    “Lesser shifters, like bears? Like half the blood running through your veins? And before you get all high and mighty with me, know that my mother was a dragon.”
    “Oh,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
    “What are you apologizing for?”
    “Because she died.”
    Bruiser’s heart rate kicked up to a gallop, his chest thumping painfully. “What do you mean?”
    “You killed her.”
    He cast her a horror-filled glance to see if what she said was some sick joke, but she stared blankly ahead, as if the words that had tumbled from her mouth weren’t akin to knives against his soul.
    “Are you always like this?”
    “Like what?” she asked in that echoing empty voice of hers.
    “Are you so dead inside that you can say things like that and not regret your words when you hurt people?”
    “They weren’t meant to hurt you, Bruiser. Tell me I’m wrong, and I’ll apologize. Did you kill your mother?”
    He swallowed hard and concentrated on not steering them over the steep embankment that lined the gravel road that would lead them back to the trailer park. Out of the side of his vision, he could see her staring at him, awaiting an answer.
    “Yeah,” he said. “I was born, and she died having me, so I guess I killed her.”
    Diem nodded once, as if she’d won.
    And it was in this moment that Bruiser realized maybe he couldn’t warm Diem up or show her what it was like to care for someone.
    Not if her heart had already grown irreversibly cold.

Chapter Four
     
    Diem wished she could take the words back. She’d put them out there to punish Bruiser for winning her as a favor. To hurt him for what he would do to her, but when she’d said he had killed his mother and then watched his handsome face melt with devastation, she’d almost got sick in the cab of his crappy old truck.
    But he deserved it. He was practically strutting around like their new marriage was something to be proud of while she was being destroyed from the inside out. Father didn’t love her, didn’t care about her at all, and this man had helped him to break her heart.
    But…he was kind and had soft eyes. And his lips had been gentle against hers, not demanding as she’d imagined the first kiss with her mate would’ve been. Especially from a man as big and dangerous-looking as Bruiser.
    God, what was she doing? All this wishy washy guilt and for what?
    None of it mattered.
    She didn’t matter.
    As the hurt in his eyes flashed across her mind again, she winced and looked out the window to hide the emotion.
    The woods here, just like her home with Father in the mountains, were breathtaking. Sure, many of the trees were dead and brown from the beetle infestation, but there was still enough greenspace